Bizet's masterpiece has been reworked to take place during the Spanish Civil War. The New York Times is enthusiastic about Richard Eyre's production at the Lincoln Center:
By teasing out details that show the characters bucking against civic and sexual constraints, he uncovers the rawness and daring at the opera’s...
Read more »
Juan Antonio Samaranch, of the International Olympic Committee, has died at age 89. Dave Zirin writes at The Nation:
When appointed head of the IOC in 1980 Samaranch was known as a proud and open fascist. When General Francisco Franco's fascists fought the Spanish Republicans during the 1936 Spanish Civil...
Read more »
SUNY Buffalo announces:
Internationally renowned artist and landscape architect Walter Hood of Oakland, Calif., is the winner of a public art competition to design the 1.1 megawatt solar array that will be constructed by NYPA this year on UB's North Campus. Hood has made important contributions to the cities...
Read more »
Widney Brown, Senior Director of Amnesty International, states:
This is outrageous. As a matter of principle, Amnesty International does not take a position on the merits of the specific charges made against a person under investigation by a court, but in this case – where investigative Judge Baltasar Garzón is...
Read more »
IPS reports:
Argentina is an example for Spaniards to bear in mind as they investigate crimes committed during the 1939-1975 dictatorship of general Francisco Franco, says Emilio Silva, head of the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (ARMH). Silva took part in the Madrid launch of the book...
Read more »
On May 24, there will be a march in at least 22 Spanish cities and in front of the embassies in various places family members will bring photos of relatives persecuted by Franco.
Read more »
In a stunning move, report El País and Público, Supreme Court Justice Luciano Varela, in charge of the case against Baltasar Garzón, has sent back the documents submitted by Falange Española (the Spanish fascist party) and Manos Limpias (an extreme right-wing public-servant union) that lay out the charges against the magistrate, and...
Read more »
Have an idea for a story or blog post for the Volunteer? Send us an email at info@alba-valb.org
Read more »
In El País today:
It is clear that Francoism gave rise to a social elite that continues to hold positions of privlege. Some of the companies that are part of the stock market index began accumulating their fortunes through the use of political prisoners .
More here.From the New York Observer:
Pablo Picasso liked to work fast. When no new canvases were handy, he painted over what he already had. He reportedly completed his masterpiece of the Spanish Civil War, Guernica, in six weeks.
More here.
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
Despite their name, the famous International Brigades of Spain’s Republican Army included thousands of Spanish soldiers who served alongside the foreign volunteers. Among them was César Orquín, an anarchist from Valencia who served as a commissar in the Lincoln Battalion. Details of his extraordinary life, long shrouded in mystery and scandal, have recently come...
Read more »
Over the many years I spent researching the presence of the International Brigades in the town of Vic and its surroundings, in northern Catalonia, I’d always been curious about the case of Simon Bulka, a medical captain, and his wife, the nurse Chrissie Wallace, both from Scotland, who were assigned to the International Hospital...
Read more »
The lives of Ruth and Haya Meites, two sisters who left Jewish Palestine in order to help Republican Spain in its struggle against fascism, illustrate the level of international women’s participation in the Spanish Civil War—and its limits.
Read more »
“Oh, you were a premature antifascist,” the chair of the Yale Classics department replied to Bernard Knox when, during a job interview in 1946, Knox told him about his stint with the International Brigades preceding his US army service during World War II. “I was taken aback,” Knox wrote later. “If you were not...
Read more »
Contemporary Spanish photographers are finding new ways to return to the memory of the Civil War, departing from the sober documentary approach that was dominant until recently.
Read more »
We talk about the “return” of Picasso’s Guernica to Spain, even though that massive painting had never been here before its “repatriation” in 1981. The magnificent show “Ben Shahn: On Non-Conformity” curated by Laura Katzman and on display until February 26 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, elicits a similar sense:...
Read more »
Richard Rothman is Special Pro Bono Counsel to Weil Law Firm, where he previously served as co-head of Complex Commercial Litigation. In 2023, Rich was honored with the New York Law Journal’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. In his forthcoming memoir Finding Ruby, Rothman explores the lives of two grandfathers of his who fought with...
Read more »
Mark L. Asquino (born in 1949) is a Foreign Service officer who retired in 2015 after a long career with postings including in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia, and Africa. Asquino’s memoir, Spanish Connections (2023), narrates a diplomatic journey that ended in Equatorial Guinea, Spain’s only former colony in sub-Saharan Africa, where he served...
Read more »
When IB vet Hans Maslowski visited his family in East Berlin in 1969, he gave them a Spanish fan signed in 1938 by 31 fellow antifascists. More than 50 years later, his great-nephew finds out who they were.
Read more »
Marianne Angermann, a young German biochemist, joined a Madrid lab in late 1935 to work with her compatriot Franz Bielschowsky, a Jewish refugee who’d been there since 1933. When the war broke out the following year, both decided stay in Spain and serve the Republican war effort as medical personnel. Marianne’s letters to her...
Read more »
ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
Search the Database